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The Delta school district figures it will save $180,000 a year by changing how it uses gas. Thrifty Foods has agreed to pay a bit more to switch part of its consumption to renewable gas.

What these two initiatives have in common is FortisBC, which is looking for ways customers can become greener — and usually, though not always, richer.

Fortis is best known as the successor to Terasen Gas, the province’s gas distributor. And that’s largely what it does, although it also has hydroelectric generation plants and distribution systems.

But it’s not willing to sit back and just distribute gas. Instead, it’s looking for ways customers can use gas differently.

For the Delta school district, new geoexchange systems will be a big part of the money-saving plan. In geoexchange, pipes are laid underground to gather heat from the earth, which is then used to warm buildings when it’s cool outside. In warmer weather, heat is pushed into the earth to cool buildings.

Those systems will be supplemented with natural gas boilers for peak conditions in the winter and for backup throughout the year.

Eleven of the school district’s buildings — which are mainly schools, but also include a small number of administrative offices — will use geoexchange. The district’s other eight buildings are getting new boilers that will be 20- to 30- per-cent more efficient than the old ones.

Not only does the district expect $180,000 in savings a year, it will also reduce its carbon footprint by 2,000 tonnes, a decrease of 64 per cent, said Garnet Ayres, the district’s deputy superintendent.

The best part of the plan is that Fortis pays for the infrastructure — a big plus for institutions like school boards, which can take years to accumulate enough capital grants to make major changes.

Fortis will own and operate the system and sell the school district the hot water produced by the geoexchange and boilers.

Fortis will do the upgrades over two summers.

“With [the school district’s] budget, they may have had to spread [the work] out over 10 years,” said Doug Stout, FortisBC’s vice-president of energy solutions and external relations.

Fortis has 60 geoexchange systems operating in the province, including some in new condominium developments. While the price to the user would be about the same as electricity, electricity costs are likely to go up in the future, Stout said, which would make the geoexchange systems relatively cheaper.

And using electricity for heating water and buildings when there are alternatives like gas isn’t the best use of the province’s limited supply of electricity, Stout said. BC Hydro is already a net importer of electricity and the Crown corporation says demand could jump 50 per cent in the next 20 years. Gas in the province, on the other hand, is plentiful.

Electricity instead should be used to power things like computers or lighting, where it is the only option, he said.

“So it’s more about preserving the highest-quality energy for the right use,” Stout said.

Store uses renewable gas

Thrifty Foods has been doing what it can to reduce its carbon footprint, including replacing inefficient cooling cases and looking for alternative lighting sources.

The Victoria-based food store, with almost 30 locations on Vancouver Island and in the Lower Mainland, was also one of the first to get rid of single-use plastic bags, requiring customers to use paper or pay as little as 25 cents for a reusable bag.

Its newer stores even have plug-ins for electric cars.

“It’s part of our overall commitment to environmental sustainability,” said Ralf Mundel, Thrifty Foods’ director of marketing and communications.

As part of that commitment, Thrifty Foods has agreed to take 10 per cent of the gas it uses — which is used mainly for its bakery and deli ovens — in renewable gas.

Renewable gas comes from waste from farms, landfills, wood products and elsewhere. The waste produces biogas, which Fortis injects into its pipeline system after removing impurities.

Fortis collects about 250,000 gigajoules a year of renewable gas, which is less than one per cent of its total gas volumes.

But it is more expensive. Fortis pays about $10 to $11 per gigajoule for renewable gas, while the spot price for gas, plus the carbon tax, is about $4, Stout said.

So Fortis relies on clients like Thrifty Foods — and about 20 other commercial and 2,000 residential customers — to pay extra for the renewable gas.

“It’s significantly more, but we have a group of customers who are willing to pay more for that green option,” Stout said. “And we see that growing slowly.”

For Thrifty Foods, the extra money — which, when it applies to just 10 per cent of the gas it takes, doesn’t add up to much — is worth it.

Thrifty Foods has an overall goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent, a target it will have reached by the end of April 2103, Mundel said.

“It comes down to the fact that our customers in the markets [where] we operate really appreciate this position,” he said. “So all these different environmental initiatives that one might consider fringe, for us they’re the right thing to do.”

Trucks convert to LNG

Fortis is also working with transportation companies to make them leaner and cleaner. The company has built a fuelling station that compresses gas for Waste Management in Coquitlam, which now has 20 garbage trucks running on natural compressed gas. The goal is to ramp that up to about 100 trucks.

Not only is it cheaper — about 40- to 50-per-cent less than diesel — it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions by about 20 to 30 per cent, Stout said.

Abbotsford-based Vedder Transport, which hauls milk and other agricultural products, runs about 50 trucks on liquefied natural gas. Fortis liquefies the gas at its facility in Delta and transports it to a fuelling station it built for Vedder in Abbotsford.

Both Vedder and Waste Management use engines developed by Vancouver-based Westport Innovations. The engines are a bit more expensive, but for heavy- and medium-size trucks and buses, the savings in fuel and greenhouse gases more than make up for that, Stout said.

Fortis owns and operates the fuelling stations, allowing the companies to use their money to buy more trucks. Even BC Ferries is considering converting to LNG.

All that’s needed is a fuelling station, the right engine and the supply of gas, whether liquefied or compressed.

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